Was Hurricane Wilma In 2005 The Most Intense In History?
We were told Melissa was the most powerful hurricane to hit Jamaica, with winds of 185 mph.
We don’t know of course what the wind speeds were at landfall, as the 185 mph figure was measured hours before landfall.
But more importantly, we have only had comprehensive satellite and aircraft data for maybe three or four decades.
This is more than just an academic matter, as we can see by looking at Hurricane Wilma, officially the most intense Atlantic hurricane, which passed through the Caribbean in 2005:
I have often mentioned this study by Chris Landsea and Andrew Hagen:
Abstract
An investigation is conducted to determine how improvements in observing capabilities and technology may have affected scientists’ ability to detect and monitor Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale Category 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean basin during the mid-twentieth century.
Previous studies state that there has been an increase in the number of intense hurricanes and attribute this increase to anthropogenic global warming. Other studies claim that the apparent increased hurricane activity is an artifact of better observational capabilities and improved technology for detecting these intense hurricanes.
The present study focuses on the 10 most recent Category 5 hurricanes recorded in the Atlantic, from Hurricane Andrew (1992) through Hurricane Felix (2007). These 10 hurricanes are placed into the context of the technology available in the period of 1944–53, the first decade of aircraft reconnaissance.
A methodology is created to determine how many of these 10 recent Category 5 hurricanes likely would have been recorded as Category 5 if they had occurred during this period using only the observations that likely would have been available with existing technology and observational networks.
Late-1940s and early-1950s best-track intensities are determined for the entire lifetime of these 10 recent Category 5 hurricanes. It is found that likely only 2 of these 10—both Category 5 landfalling hurricanes—would have been recorded as Category 5 hurricanes if they had occurred during the late-1940s period.
The results suggest that intensity estimates for extreme tropical cyclones prior to the satellite era are unreliable for trend and variability analysis.
Source: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/25/13/jcli-d-11-00420.1.xml
Essentially it analysed the most recent ten Cat 5 hurricanes, when it was written in 2012, and established how they would have been categorised using 1940/50s observation technologies.
Of the ten, only two would have been classed as Cat 5, both of which made landfall at Cat 5 – Andrew and Felix.
One of the ten, of course, was Wilma. This is their summary for Wilma – note, the explanatory box below is taken from Fig 5, which the report omits to avoid repetition:
I have highlighted the key comment – Aircraft in the late 1940s and early 1950s would not have been able to penetrate the center since the central pressure was below 940 mb.
Without the data from the centre of Wilma when pressure fell below 940mb, Hagen and Landsea reckon that at most it would have been rated as Cat 4 with winds of 125 kts, 144 mph.
Of course, before the late 1940s, there were no hurricane hunter aircraft at all, meaning Wilma would not have been properly measured until landfall. Many hurricanes, of course, never hit land at all, or if they do as much weaker storms.
The reality is that hurricanes as strong as Melissa have almost certainly hit Jamaica in recorded history there.
But we simply did not have the technology at the time to measure them.
See more here notalotofpeopleknowthat
Bold emphasis added
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